The BrainSmart Leader

Citation

Ingram, H. (2001), "The BrainSmart Leader", International Journal of Contemporary Hospitality Management, Vol. 13 No. 4, pp. 208-208. https://doi.org/10.1108/ijchm.2001.13.4.208.1

The authors of this book assert that “BrainSmart leaders are the corporate change agents for the modern world” who, through their employees, can improve their companies’ bottom‐line profits. The confident strap line is that “you will learn from this book how you can achieve all this yourself”. In similar vein, the preface rather immodestly describes the book as “a significant work” that “brings with it a new understanding of the business brain in action”. These are bold words, but are these claims of understanding creativity and intelligence in organizations justified?

It seems clear that the target reader is the busy executive because the book begins with a diagnostic quiz whose scoring is linked to the reading of subsequent chapters. The tone is set in the first chapter in a case study on Rich Bannon of IBM that demonstrates the problems of managing change in large organizations. Some of the themes identified are inspiring people in a downsizing culture, synchronising complicated and disparate processes, and teamworking when people are wary of change. Bannon’s tips about BrainSmart leaders are captured in the form of a mind map (a Buzan speciality) that captures the book’s pervading principles of intelligence, creativity and leadership.

Each of the successive ten chapters begins with a similar quiz that purports to help to illuminate BrainSmart leadership developments, including intellectual capital, creativity, people power, managing innovation and process innovation through teams. It is not until Chapter 6 that the “success formula” is revealed through the acronym TEFCAS (trials, events, feedback, check, adjust, and success). The contention is that the process involves generating ideas, testing them and finally involving people in making them happen. While this may not be rocket science, the ideas are presented in an accessible and reader‐friendly way. For example there are many case studies including one based at the Holiday Inn Arena in Binghampton, New York, featuring the hotel’s general manager Candace Jones and Tony Dottino (one of the authors), who stayed there in 1996. Dottino complained about the faulty air conditioning and confessed to being impressed about Jones’ candid letter to him, and this led to a relationship aimed at addressing the hotel’s poor performance and declining morale. Naturally, Dottino used mind maps to analyse the frustrations of the hotel staff, and it was revealed that Jones’ energy and perfectionism had tended to inhibit delegation and the understanding of vision by subordinates. By encouraging greater staff involvement and the exploration of innovative options for the hotel’s declining market, performance and customer satisfaction were increased. Of course autocratic and independent hotel managers are not uncommon and perhaps this case study reflects how leadership can often be a matter of management style and approach in essence concerned with interpersonal relationships with staff and customers.

The BrainSmart Leader is attractively presented and contains many stories, quizzes and illustrations that help to demonstrate context and examples. Despite these examples, this might be said to be a narrow book that draws on the wide experiences of the authors to reinforce their own publications and consultancy interests. It is difficult to imagine business executives actually using the TEFCAS process as described by the authors, but the book does contain some good practical advice. Any text that may cause a busy manager to reflect on how he or she plans and thinks is useful and welcome. Busy managers may be attracted to the clear and non‐demanding style and diagnostic tests on their practices and may be challenged into improving them. Although many of these ideas have appeared in Buzan’s previous books, including mind‐mapping and creativity, the TEFCAS acronym is an interesting way of looking at decision processes. Based on good practice rather than academic research, this book contains something for the practising manager, but little for the student.